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Friday, February 27, 2015

As reported by Gizmodo: One of several startups endeavoring to build Elon Musk's Hyperloop
vision thinks it can start building a test track to demonstrate and
develop the idea next year. That's a lovely sounding idea, but let's
file this plan under "insanely hypothetical."

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, Inc.
is a crowdsourced team of hundreds of brains that are trying to iron
out all of the details of how to make the Hyperloop a reality. And there
area lot of details to attend to when you want to build a 400-mile
supersonic transport tube connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles:
Everything from capsule geometry, to financial statements, to route
details. It's a very optimistic endeavor with plenty of smart people on
board. Just look at that pretty GIF up there! I'm ready to ride tubes
into The Future.

The idea is to build a five-mile track in Quay Valley, a planned
community (itself a grandiose idea) that will be built from scratch on
7,500 acres of land around Interstate 5, midway between San Francisco
and Los Angeles. Construction of the hyperloop will be paid for with
$100 million Hyperloop Transportation Technologies expects to raise through a direct public offering in the third quarter of this year.

The site of the track, Quay Valley, is a just proposed
7500 acre planned community on private land. It's core document
contains just about every utopian idea you can think of. "We'll use
half the water that typically would be used," Quay Hays, the brains of
the operation, told the Fresno Bee. "We don't use water, we reuse it. Every drop will be cleaned and reused."

As Wired points out
Hyperloop Transportation Technologies avoids many of the pesky
right-of-way problems inherent in plowing 400 miles of infrastructure
through the world by building the track. Of course, the full-scale
five-mile track won't demonstrate some of the most important details
because it's not going to get the capsules going 800 miles per hour.

Last month, Elon Musk announced plans to
build his own Hyperloop test track in Texas. The main difference
between Musk and Hyperloop Transpiration Technologies being his billions
of dollars and loads of experience building larger than life ideas.

I reached out to Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, Inc. using the email I found on this press release to ask if they see any possible reason their plan might not work out.

Developing the Hyperloop is an insanely ambitious and admirable project. Theoretically it's possible.
This wouldn't be the first time that a very idealistic and ambitious
plan proved everyone wrong. We wish the dreamers the best. [Wired]

As reported by Physics.org: When you don't know how
to get to an unfamiliar place, you probably rely on a smart phone or
other device with a Global Positioning System (GPS) module for guidance.
You may not realize that, especially at high latitudes on our planet,
signals traveling between GPS satellites and your device can get
distorted in Earth's upper atmosphere.Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, in collaboration with the University of New Brunswick in Canada, are studying irregularities in the ionosphere, a part of the atmosphere centered about 217 miles (350 kilometers) above the ground that defines the boundary between Earth and space. The ionosphere is a shell of charged particles (electrons and ions), called plasma, that is produced by solar radiation and energetic particle impact.The new study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, compares turbulence in the auroral region to that at higher latitudes, and gains insights that could have implications for the mitigation of disturbances in the ionosphere. Auroras are spectacular multicolored lights in the sky that mainly occur when energetic particles driven from the magnetosphere, the protective magnetic bubble that surrounds Earth, crash into the ionosphere below it. The auroral zones are narrow oval-shaped bands over high latitudes outside the polar caps, which are regions around Earth's magnetic poles. This study focused on the atmosphere above the Northern Hemisphere."We want to explore the near-Earth plasma and find out how big plasma irregularities need to be to interfere with navigation signals broadcast by GPS," said Esayas Shume. Shume is a researcher at JPL and the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and lead author of the study.If you think of the ionosphere as a fluid, the irregularities comprise regions of lower density (bubbles) in the neighborhood of high-density ionization areas, creating the effect of clumps of more and less intense ionization. This "froth" can interfere with radio signals including those from GPS and aircraft, particularly at high latitudes.The size of the irregularities in the plasma gives researchers clues about their cause, which help predict when and where they will occur. More turbulence means a bigger disturbance to radio signals.

"One of the key findings is that there are different kinds of irregularities in the auroral zone compared to the polar cap," said Anthony Mannucci, supervisor of the ionospheric and atmospheric remote sensing group at JPL. "We found that the effects on radio signals will be different in these two locations."The researchers found that abnormalities above the Arctic polar cap are of a smaller scale - about 0.62 to 5 miles (1 to 8 kilometers) - than in the auroral region, where they are 0.62 to 25 miles (1 to 40 kilometers) in diameter.Why the difference? As Shume explains, the polar cap is connected to solar wind particles and electric fields in interplanetary space. On the other hand, the region of auroras is connected to the energetic particles in Earth's magnetosphere, in which magnetic field lines close around Earth. These are crucial details that explain the different dynamics of the two regions.To look at irregularities in the ionosphere, researchers used data from the Canadian Space Agency satellite Cascade Smallsat and Ionospheric Polar Explorer (CASSIOPE), which launched in September 2013. The satellite covers the entire region of high latitudes, making it a useful tool for exploring the ionosphere.The data come from one of the instruments on CASSIOPE that looks at GPS signals as they skim the ionosphere. The instrument was conceived by researchers at the University of New Brunswick."It's the first time this kind of imaging has been done from space," said Attila Komjathy, JPL principal investigator and co-author of the study. "No one has observed these dimensional scales of the ionosphere before."The research has numerous applications. For instance, aircraft flying over the North Pole rely on solid communications with the ground; if they lose these signals, they may be required to change their flight paths, Mannucci said. Radio telescopes may also experience distortion from the ionosphere; understanding the effects could lead to more accurate measurements for astronomy."It causes a lot of economic impact when these irregularities flare up and get bigger," he said.NASA's Deep Space Network, which tracks and communicates with spacecraft, is affected by the ionosphere. Komjathy and colleagues also work on mitigating and correcting for these distortions for the DSN. They can use GPS to measure the delay in signals caused by the ionosphere and then relay that information to spacecraft navigators who are using the DSN's tracking data."By understanding the magnitude of the interference, spacecraft navigators can subtract the distortion from the ionosphere to get more accurate spacecraft locations," Mannucci said.

Researchers at
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, in collaboration
with the University of New Brunswick in Canada, are studying
irregularities in the ionosphere,
a part of the atmosphere centered about 217 miles (350 kilometers)
above the ground that defines the boundary between Earth and space. The
ionosphere is a shell of charged particles (electrons and ions), called
plasma, that is produced by solar radiation and energetic particle
impact.
The new study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters,
compares turbulence in the auroral region to that at higher latitudes,
and gains insights that could have implications for the mitigation of
disturbances in the ionosphere. Auroras are spectacular multicolored
lights in the sky that mainly occur when energetic particles
driven from the magnetosphere, the protective magnetic bubble that
surrounds Earth, crash into the ionosphere below it. The auroral zones
are narrow oval-shaped bands over high latitudes
outside the polar caps, which are regions around Earth's magnetic
poles. This study focused on the atmosphere above the Northern
Hemisphere.
"We want to explore the near-Earth plasma and find out how big plasma
irregularities need to be to interfere with navigation signals
broadcast by GPS," said Esayas Shume. Shume is a researcher at JPL and
the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and lead author of
the study.
If you think of the ionosphere as a fluid, the irregularities
comprise regions of lower density (bubbles) in the neighborhood of
high-density ionization areas, creating the effect of clumps of more and
less intense ionization. This "froth" can interfere with radio signals
including those from GPS and aircraft, particularly at high latitudes.
The size of the irregularities in the plasma gives researchers clues
about their cause, which help predict when and where they will occur.
More turbulence means a bigger disturbance to radio signals.

Researchers at
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, in collaboration
with the University of New Brunswick in Canada, are studying
irregularities in the ionosphere,
a part of the atmosphere centered about 217 miles (350 kilometers)
above the ground that defines the boundary between Earth and space. The
ionosphere is a shell of charged particles (electrons and ions), called
plasma, that is produced by solar radiation and energetic particle
impact.
The new study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters,
compares turbulence in the auroral region to that at higher latitudes,
and gains insights that could have implications for the mitigation of
disturbances in the ionosphere. Auroras are spectacular multicolored
lights in the sky that mainly occur when energetic particles
driven from the magnetosphere, the protective magnetic bubble that
surrounds Earth, crash into the ionosphere below it. The auroral zones
are narrow oval-shaped bands over high latitudes
outside the polar caps, which are regions around Earth's magnetic
poles. This study focused on the atmosphere above the Northern
Hemisphere.
"We want to explore the near-Earth plasma and find out how big plasma
irregularities need to be to interfere with navigation signals
broadcast by GPS," said Esayas Shume. Shume is a researcher at JPL and
the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and lead author of
the study.
If you think of the ionosphere as a fluid, the irregularities
comprise regions of lower density (bubbles) in the neighborhood of
high-density ionization areas, creating the effect of clumps of more and
less intense ionization. This "froth" can interfere with radio signals
including those from GPS and aircraft, particularly at high latitudes.
The size of the irregularities in the plasma gives researchers clues
about their cause, which help predict when and where they will occur.
More turbulence means a bigger disturbance to radio signals.

Researchers at
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, in collaboration
with the University of New Brunswick in Canada, are studying
irregularities in the ionosphere,
a part of the atmosphere centered about 217 miles (350 kilometers)
above the ground that defines the boundary between Earth and space. The
ionosphere is a shell of charged particles (electrons and ions), called
plasma, that is produced by solar radiation and energetic particle
impact.
The new study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters,
compares turbulence in the auroral region to that at higher latitudes,
and gains insights that could have implications for the mitigation of
disturbances in the ionosphere. Auroras are spectacular multicolored
lights in the sky that mainly occur when energetic particles
driven from the magnetosphere, the protective magnetic bubble that
surrounds Earth, crash into the ionosphere below it. The auroral zones
are narrow oval-shaped bands over high latitudes
outside the polar caps, which are regions around Earth's magnetic
poles. This study focused on the atmosphere above the Northern
Hemisphere.
"We want to explore the near-Earth plasma and find out how big plasma
irregularities need to be to interfere with navigation signals
broadcast by GPS," said Esayas Shume. Shume is a researcher at JPL and
the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and lead author of
the study.
If you think of the ionosphere as a fluid, the irregularities
comprise regions of lower density (bubbles) in the neighborhood of
high-density ionization areas, creating the effect of clumps of more and
less intense ionization. This "froth" can interfere with radio signals
including those from GPS and aircraft, particularly at high latitudes.
The size of the irregularities in the plasma gives researchers clues
about their cause, which help predict when and where they will occur.
More turbulence means a bigger disturbance to radio signals.

Thursday, February 26, 2015

As reported by Engadget: It's a good day for proponents of an open internet: The Federal
Communications Commission just approved its long-awaited network
neutrality plan, which reclassifies broadband internet as a Title II
public utility and gives the agency more regulatory power in the
process. And unlike the FCC's last stab at net neutrality in 2010,
today's new rules also apply to mobile broadband. FCC Chairman Tom
Wheeler laid out the basic gist of the plan
earlier this month -- it'll ban things like paid prioritization, a
tactic some ISPs used to get additional fees from bandwidth-heavy
companies like Netflix, as well as the slowdown of "lawful content." But
now Wheeler's vision is more than just rhetoric; it's something the FCC
can actively enforce."It [the Internet] is our printing press, it is our town square, it
is our individual soap box and our shared platform for opportunity,"
said FCC commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel during today's open commission
meeting. "That is why open internet policies matter. That is why I
support network neutrality."Don't expect the net neutrality drama to end here, though. Verizon has already made vague threats about suing the agency if it went through the public utility route, and Wheeler expects other lawsuits as well. Verizon's last legal action against the FCC led an appeals court to strike down
its earlier (but far weaker) open internet rules on jurisdictional
grounds. That's what ultimately pushed the agency to reclassify
broadband -- now that it's viewed as a utility like telephone service,
the FCC is free to make stronger regulatory decisions. The agency is
aiming to alleviate fears of overregulation through forbearance, a
process that lets it legally ignore certain regulations that other
public utilities have to deal. That includes things like limiting rates
and unbundling, which lets companies take advantage of equipment and
services from competitors.If you've been following the net neutrality debate over the past few
years, you wouldn't be blamed for getting discouraged. Verizon's legal
victory over the FCC last year made it seem like the big companies --
who would benefit the most from lax internet regulations -- had pretty
much won the war for the web. But, it turns out, that defeat actually
helped spark an unprecedented amount of grassroots activism on the web
from groups like Fight for the Future,
which got more than four million consumers to write into the FCC in
support of net neutrality. Companies like Twitter, Reddit and Netflix --
whose businesses rely on unobstructed access to web users -- also did
their part to lobby for an open web. All of that led to President Obama announcing his support for Title II broadband reclassification last fall, which put the FCC in a pretty awkward spot.

In his Wired editorial,
Wheeler pointed out that he was previously relying on "commercial
reasonableness," a concept brought up in the Telecommunications Act of
1996, to keep the internet open. He ended up changing his mind, however,
when he realized that line of thought could end up protecting companies
more than consumers. But, far more likely, Wheeler changed his stance
as the tide turned in favor of regulating broadband as a utility.When it comes to the new mobile broadband rules, commissioner Mignon
Clyburn framed it as something that will help ensure equality: "We know
many low income Americans rely heavily on their mobile device, and some
rely heavily on that mobile phone as their only access to the internet,"
she said. "They need, they deserve, a robust experience on par with
their wired peers."Television writer and producer Veena Sud, whose series The Killing was saved from cancellation by Netflix twice, laid out the artistic justification for net neutrality:

What the open internet means for creativity, innovation and diversity
points is by no means limited to my own experience. Series like Orange is the New Black and Transparent are giving voice to worlds and people and experiences never before seen on the small screen.

Sud also mentioned an intriguing data point about web content: Around
40 percent of online comedies and dramas are backed by women, compared
to just 20 percent on traditional television.So what's next? You can expect plenty of of chest thumping from
Republicans, libertarians, and large telecoms against the new rules. FCC
commissioner Ajit Pai also railed against the agency's decision as
intrusive government regulation. He was skeptical that the FCC will
stick with its forbearance plan, and he warned that the open internet
rules will also lead to slower broadband speeds and more taxes. Expect
to hear those talking points repeatedly throughout the rest of the year."This proposal has been described by one opponent as 'A secret plan
to regulate the internet.' Nonsense!," FCC chairman Tom Wheeler said
right before the agency voted on the new rules."This is no more a plan
to regulate the internet than the first amendment is a plan to regulate
free speech. They both stand for the same concept: Openness, expression,
and an absence of gatekeepers telling people what they can do, where
they can go, and what they can think."

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

As reported by Quartz: Researchers
have achieved the fastest mobile wireless speed to date, managing to
reach 1 terabit per second over a 5G connection—about 65,000 times
faster than the average 4G download speed.

“This
is the same capacity as fiber optics but we are doing it wirelessly,”
Rahim Tafazolli, director of the University of Surrey’s 5G Innovation
Center, told V3. Samsung set the previous 5G speed record, 7.5 gigabits per second, in October.

Theoretically,
this major speed boost—announced at V3’s mobile conference—means the
mobile web will be able to support richer multimedia experiences. Higher
speeds will undoubtedly accelerate the mobile video market, and the increased bandwidth will be able to facilitate the streaming of larger files, such as video shot in 4K resolution.
Without tangible limitations to speed, developers can also build more
powerful cloud-based apps. (Earlier this month, Apple raised the cap on the size of apps from 2GB to 4GB.)

It’s
important to note that the fastest 5G speeds to date have been achieved
in a vacuum. Latency, a slowdown introduced by infrastructure, will
remain a problem, possibly for decades, Tafazolli told V3. Furthermore,
mobile operators have yet to agree on a single vision of 5G.

Some want it to be a blend of existing technologies (2G, 3G, 4G, Wi-Fi)
while others are pushing for a clear demarcation, with specific data
rate and latency targets.

The
recent benchmark signals potential for a more connected world, with
faster flow of information, but the real-world availability of 5G is
still years away. When it does arrive, it likely won’t be anything close
to the 1Tbps achieved. Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, said
in January that 5G could come to market by 2020 in Britain, with
projections for speeds as high as 50Gbps.

The US is poised to migrate to 5G in 2025, according to a 2014 report by the Congressional Research Service.

Sunday, February 22, 2015

As reported by The Blaze: Spanish scientists may have just developed a way to almost pinpoint
the locations shown in videos or photographs, even ones with vague and
unfamiliar backgrounds.

The technology works by comparing audiovisual algorithms with a
global multimedia database. Based on the locations from which they
already have photos and video, they can more easily trace other
multimedia to within a 6-mile radius of the actual location. In some
cases, the technology is capable of concluding the location within a
1/2-mile radius, according to the scientists’ study published in by the
academic journal “Information Sciences.”

The system relies on recognition of certain audio and visual
components unique to that location. However, having access to both audio
and visual elements isn’t necessarily required for the technology to
help track down an approximate spot, although access to each is most
effective.

“The acoustic information can be as valid as the visual and, on
occasions, even more so when it comes to geolocating a video,” Xavier
Sevillano of La Salle campus at Ramón Llull University in Barcelona,
Spain, said.“In this field we use some physics and mathematical vectors taken
from the field of recognition of acoustic sources, because they have
already demonstrated positive results,” Sevillano said.The advantages of such software could be huge. For example, law
enforcement could use it while trying to track down missing persons. All
they would need is a recent social media photo or video of that person
to narrow the search territory.

On a much larger, and perhaps more consequential scale, the
technology could be added to the existing resources of intelligence
agencies to pinpoint the locations of terrorists. Recent examples in
which the technology could have been useful include videos released by
the Islamic State, or ISIS, showing the executions of hostages.And, as Sevillano points out, the system could be even more accurate while trying to track down terrorists.

“Our system does not make any assumptions regarding the location of
the videos, but in these cases we are given very valuable additional
information to limit the searches, as we already know that we are
dealing with the area of Iraq or Syria, and therefore, we would only use
reference videos from there,” Sevillano said.

As reported by Reuters: U.S. and British spies hacked
into the world's biggest maker of phone SIM cards, allowing them
to potentially monitor the calls, texts and emails of billions
of mobile users around the world, an investigative news website
reported.The alleged hack on Gemalto, if confirmed, would
expand the scope of known mass surveillance methods available to
U.S. and British spy agencies to include not just email and web
traffic, as previously revealed, but also mobile communications.

The Franco-Dutch company said on Friday it was investigating
whether the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and Britain's
GCHQ had hacked into its systems to steal encryption keys that
could unlock the security settings on billions of mobile phones.

The report by The Intercept site, which cites documents
provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, could prove an
embarrassment for the U.S. and British governments. It opens a
fresh front in the dispute between civil liberties campaigners
and intelligence services which say their citizens face a grave
threat of attack from militant groups like Islamic State.

It comes just weeks after a British tribunal ruled that GCHQ
had acted unlawfully in accessing data on millions of people in
Britain that had been collected by the NSA.

A spokesman for GCHQ (Government Communication Headquarters)
said on Friday that it did not comment on intelligence matters.
The NSA could not be immediately reached for comment.The Intercept report (bit.ly/19E0KUK) said the hack
was detailed in a secret 2010 GCHQ document and allowed the NSA
and GCHQ to monitor a large portion of voice and data mobile
communications around the world without permission from
governments, telecom companies or users.

"We take this publication very seriously and will devote all
resources necessary to fully investigate and understand the
scope of such sophisticated techniques," said Gemalto, whose
shares sunk by as much as 10 percent in early trading on Friday,
following the report.The report follows revelations from Snowden in 2013 of the
NSA's Prism programme which allowed the agency to access email
and web data handled by the world's largest Internet companies,
including Google, Yahoo and Facebook.

SURVEILLANCEThe new allegations could boost efforts by major technology
firms such as Apple Inc and Google to make strong
encryption methods standard in communications devices they sell,
moves attacked by some politicians and security officials.

Leaders including U.S. President Barack Obama and British
Prime Minister David Cameron have expressed concern that turning
such encryption into a mass-market feature could prevent
governments from tracking militants planning attacks.

Gemalto makes SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) cards for
phones and tablets as well as "chip and pin" bank cards and
biometric passports. It produces around 2 billion SIM cards a
year and counts Verizon, AT&T Inc and Vodafone
among hundreds of wireless network provider customers.

The GCHQ spybase in the UK.

The Intercept, published by First Look Media, was founded by
the journalists who first interviewed Snowden and made headlines
around the world with reports on U.S. electronic surveillance
programmes.

It published what it said was a secret GCHQ document that
said its staff implanted software to monitor Gemalto's entire
network, giving them access to SIM card encryption keys. The
report suggested this gave GCHQ, with the backing of the NSA,
unlimited access to phone communications using Gemalto SIMs.

French bank Mirabaud said in a research report the attacks
appeared to be limited to 2010 and 2011 and were aimed only at
older 2G phones widely used in emerging markets, rather than
modern smartphones. It did not name the source of these
assertions.

Some analysts argued that if a highly security-conscious
company like Gemalto is vulnerable, then all of its competitors
are as well.

Gemalto competes with several European and Chinese SIM card
suppliers. A spokesman for one major rival, Giesecke & Devrien
of Germany, told Reuters: "We have no signs that something like
that happened to us. We always do everything to protect our
customers' data."But while security experts have long believed spy agencies
in many countries have the ability to crack the complex
mathematical codes used to encrypt most modern communications,
such methods remain costly, limiting their usefulness to
targeted hijacking of individual communications.

Friday, February 20, 2015

As reported by Forbes: There’s now a technology to replace almost everything in your wallet. Your cash, credit cards, and loyalty programs are all on their way to becoming obsolete. Money can now be sent via app, text, e-mail – it can even be sent via Snapchat. But you can’t leave your wallet home just yet. That’s because there is one item that remains largely unchanged: your drivers license.If the Iowa Department of Motor Vehicles has its way, that may no longer be the case. According to an article in Des Moines Register, the agency is in the early stages of developing mobile software for just this purpose. The app would store a resident’s personal information, whatever is already on the physical licenses, and also include a scannable bar code. The plans are for the app to include a two-step verification process including some type of biometric or pin code. At this time, it appears that specific implementation details are still being worked out.The governments of United Kingdom and United Arab Emirates had both previously announced their own attempts to experiment with the concept. It’s becoming increasingly common to see mobile versions of other documents. Over 30 states now allow motorists to show electronic proof of insurance. It only follows that the drivers license would be next. But the considerations around that document are different – it is perhaps the most regulated and important document that a person carries.At first thought, the idea seems rife with potential security and privacy issues. It is well known at this point that nothing is unhackable; and if a project is made on a government contracting schedule, the likelihood of a breach is only greater. There’s already a contentious legal debate regarding law enforcements’ abilities to search your devices. Everywhere there is growing concern about what else apps, once installed, can be used to collect or carry out in the future.

Questions of security, however, must take into account context – and there, it can be argued that our current regimes of physical documents have been an enormous failure. Having every state choose their own approach for issuing IDs has led to patchwork regulations and glaring weak points in the system that criminals have repeatedly taken advantage of. Drivers licenses today are regularly forged, stolen, and compromised – it’s far from a secure situation.There have been major advancements in the technologies that are readily available to consumers. New phones now come standard with features like Near Field Communication (for systems like Apple Pay and Google Wallet), and increasingly, biometric scanners (to use your face or thumbprint to unlock your home screen). In combination with existing practices like using end-to-end encryption, smart cards, and PIN codes, a technological solution may be feasible, theoretically. How these systems perform in real world conditions, on this scale, remains to be seen.Chris Wiesinger, President of Trace Intercept, a consultancy focused on issues related to digital identity, sees the upside to adopting new technologies as far greater than the potential risks. Wiesinger argues that we are “awash in a world of credentials.” It’s become far too much for individuals to properly manage. He explains that with the inclusion of systems like Apple’s Touch ID, there is a unique opportunity to leverage a new security infrastructure, “I believe all the technologies to make this a high-security operation are already in play, and just need to be orchestrated effectively.”Having viable digital counterparts to the physical documents and cards we use will allow us to lessen the severity of issues like fraud. But Wiesinger believes that the larger issue that needs to be addressed is the way we approach identity as a whole. What he is advocating for is a larger change in empowering individuals to gain agency over what personal information and attributes are shared, and in what context. Digital drivers licenses, as well as all the other credentials, could play an important role in making this ecosystem possible.In Iowa, the success of their pilot study will likely depend more on issues of policy and execution than technological performance. Current plans allow for digital drivers licenses to be used at airports – it would be wise to restrict security-related use cases till the implementation is much farther along. The state should work with the private sector to start by letting residents use their digital licenses for low-level transactions like verifying age with alcohol and checking into a hotel. It is still too soon to allow a digital license the same authority as the physical one. Although, that day may come down the line.Some have argued that this discussion will soon become irrelevant because of the amount that is already known about us. When our objects, devices, and institutions know not just who we are, but extremely specific details of our behaviors, the function of a legal identification document becomes unnecessary. It’s true that we are quickly losing our ability to choose when and by whom we are identified.Despite that, it is unlikely that we will ever see physical documents completely replaced. Throughout history identification documents have been used to signify recognition. A paper document is proof of your existence in the world, it’s an acknowledgement by the government that you have legal rights. There are few forms of control as powerful as the ability to issue or confiscate someone’s identification paperwork. For that reason, don’t expect physical documents to ever go away – their symbolic value will exist long past their day-to-day utility.

Thursday, February 19, 2015

As reported by the Vox: We've known since last week
that Apple was working on some sort of car-related project. The big
question was whether Apple was working on a line of car accessories —
perhaps expanding on its existing CarPlay platform — or whether the company was going to start building its own cars.New reporting from 9to5Mac provides strong evidence that Apple is working on an Apple Car.Cars are complicated, and building one requires skills that a
high-tech company like Apple doesn't normally have. According to
9to5Mac, Apple has been snapping up engineers with expertise in motors,
transmissions, drive trains, car interiors, and so forth.The list includes four people with experience at Ford, four who
previously worked at Tesla, a former CEO of Mercedes-Benz, and a General
Motors employee. Apple has also hired an engineer from auto-part maker
EMCO Gears and multiple engineers from A123 Systems, which makes
batteries for hybrid and electric cars (A123 has sued Apple over these hires).

It's unlikely that Apple would hire people like this if it were only working on car accessories. And it wouldn't hire hundreds of people
just to work on a pilot project. Granted, Apple CEO Tim Cook could
still decide to cancel it if the results aren't up to Apple's standards.
But there's a good chance we'll see some kind of Apple Car in the next
few years.

Apple is well-positioned to create a new kind of car

Apple may be better positioned to jump into the car business than
almost any other Silicon Valley company. Most tech companies focus on
one relatively narrow piece of the technology "stack." You've got Intel
and AMD making computer chips, Dell and Samsung building devices, Google
and Microsoft developing software, and so forth.

Apple is virtually alone in building its own products from top to
bottom. An iPhone is based on an Apple-designed chip and runs
Apple-designed software. This philosophy makes Apple particularly good
at re-inventing product categories, as it did with the iPod, iPhone, and
iPad. It can build exactly the right hardware to support its software,
and vice versa, creating a seamless user experience.This kind of tight integration between hardware and software will be
particularly important for cars, where reliability and energy-efficiency
are major priorities. Apple's work on iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks also
means the company has experience with batteries and power management,
which are also crucial to building electric cars.

Indeed, this could be a weakness for Google, which has traditionally
created software that runs on other peoples devices. Combining Google's
self-driving software with a conventional car might produce a less
appealing product than having one company design the whole product.

It won't be easy for Apple to catch up to Google on self-driving technology

By the time Apple brings a car to market, partially self-driving cars will be commonplace
and fully autonomous vehicles may be right around the corner. To
compete with Google, it will have to build its own self-driving
technology. And that won't be easy.

Google has a five-year head start creating self-driving cars. It also
has a fleet of Street View cars that will allow it to produce detailed
3D maps of the world's streets, which will be essential to helping
self-driving cars stay on the road. Apple doesn't have a great track
record with maps — Apple has struggled to produce a mapping app that rivals Google Maps.Google also has a culture that prizes tackling difficult engineering
problems — dubbed "moon shots" — like building a self-driving car. In
contrast, Apple has traditionally been focused on building beautiful,
user-friendly gadgets. When it has tried to expand outside of that core
area — as with iCloud and its predecessors — the results have often been disappointing.On the other hand, building a beautiful, reliable, and
energy-efficient electric car would be a major feat in its own right.
Even if Apple struggles to catch up on the self-driving front, it could
still sell a lot of conventional vehicles before autonomous vehicles
become ubiquitous.

As reported by UPI: On Friday, astronauts aboard the International Space Station will
initiate the station's first reassembly in several years. The station
will be reconfigured to create two new docking ports for the space taxis
NASA hopes to have launched by the end of 2017 as part of its
Commercial Crew program.The first of three assembly spacewalks will be conducted on Friday by
NASA astronauts Barry Wilmore and Terry Virts. While outside the
station, they will begin work installing cables and communications
equipment for the two new berthing slips.
Wilmore and Virts won't be able to ready the two new ports
without new equipment, however. Two International Docking Adapters are
needed to turn what were once parking spots for NASA's Space Shuttles
into docks capable of accepting future U.S. commercial crew vehicles.
The two adapters will be launched by SpaceX resupply missions later this
year.
"This is quite a bit of work," Mike Suffredini, NASA's ISS program manager, told Discovery News.
"Our plan has always been to have a docking capability in place and
operational by the end of 2015, and we're on track to do that."

NASA is anxious to have its space taxis up and operational. Since
the Space Shuttle program ended in 2011, NASA has had to rely on Russia
to ferry its astronauts to and from the space station. Last year, NASA
awarded major contracts to Boeing and SpaceX to construct space taxis.
The combination of space taxis and reconfigured ports will not
only make NASA's ISS missions more autonomous, but also bolster their
size and scope.
"They will permit the standard station crew size to grow from six
to seven, potentially doubling the amount of time devoted to research
aboard the orbiting laboratory," NASA officials said in a recent press release.
Friday's spacewalk will be televised by NASA TV. It will be Wilmore's second career spacewalk and the first for Virts.

As reported by Virtualization Review: The Internet of Things (IoT) is a growing area of the increasingly
connected universe. Its advantages are many, but with those gains come
new challenges. One of the biggest is security, in particular identity
management. And because this is the IT world, analyst firm Gartner Inc.
has spawned a new acronym with which to tag this challenge: IDoT --
the Identity of Things.
In the past, Gartner has used another acronym, IAM, to describe what
it calls "Identity and Access Management." IAM needs to significantly
evolve, reports Gartner, because typical solutions can't scale to IoT
size.
"IAM leaders must reconsider how traditional approaches to
cybersecurity and IAM work in a world where devices and services are so
abundant, in so many different forms and positioned at so many
different points within the IT ecosystem," Earl Perkins, research vice
president at Gartner, said in a press release. Gartner describes the rationale behind the new acronym:

The Identity of Things (IDoT) is a new extension to identity
management that encompasses all entity identities, whatever form those
entities take. These identities are then used to define relationships
among the entities -- between a device and a human, a device and
another device, a device and an application/service, or (as in
traditional IAM) a human and an application/service.

New ways must be developed to handle security in the IoT, Gartner
says, emphasizing the relationships between devices and objects, and
not just their identities. Doing that, Perkins said, "… allows the IDoT
to exist and become part of new responsibilities for IAM in the
enterprise."
Gartner has previously predicted
a huge spike in the IoT in 2015, with a bump of 30 percent in connected
devices like automobiles, refrigerators, wearable devices and even
coffee makers. This year, Gartner expects there to be about 4.9 billion
"things," with a value of $69.5 billion.The U.S. Federal Trade Commission released its own report
earlier this year that addressed IoT security, listing a number of
concrete steps companies developing IoT devices should take. They
include a defense-in-depth strategy using multiple layers of security;
monitoring connected devices throughout their expected lifecycle; and
building security into devices from the beginning, instead of tacking
it on at the end.

A Tesla Model S vehicle battery pack. Designs for the home battery pack have not yet been released.

As reported by Quartz: In all the excitement over the looming battle for supremacy in electric cars between Tesla and Apple, some pretty important comments last week from Elon Musk were largely overlooked.

During Tesla’s quarterly earnings call, Musk said his car company is progressing with plans to sell a lithium-ion battery for energy storage in homes and businesses.

We’re going to unveil the Tesla home battery, or the sort of consumer battery that will be for use in people’s houses or businesses, fairly soon. We have the design done, and it should start going to production, probably in about six months, or so. We’re trying to figure out a date to have the product unveiling, but it’s probably in the next month or two months. And it’s really great; I’m really excited about it.

We’ve known about this for a while, of course. As I wrote last year, Tesla’s batteries could be huge—and possibly a much bigger product than its cars.

In theory, a homeowner could capture energy in a solar panel on their roof (maybe made by Solar City, which Musk chairs) and store it in a Tesla battery. This is key, because at the moment, one of the main problems with solar power is that, as The Verge neatly put it, “the sun isn’t always shining when you need power, and sometimes the sun is shining when you don’t need power.”

There’s a lot of hype about what kind of threat Tesla could pose to electricity utilities by helping people go off the grid. Morgan Stanley estimated last year that by 2028, Tesla’s US fleet of cars will have an energy storage capacity of 237GW which it said was equal to 22% of US production capacity, and nearly 10 times larger than existing US grid storage capacity. (That analysis doesn’t even take into account batteries sold separately from cars).

In reality, mass defections off the electricity grid aren’t likely. Solar City CTO and Musk’s cousin Peter Rive has said he has “no interest” in such a scenario, because “the grid is a network, and where there are networks, there are network effects.” Also, it seems to be illegal in some states.

Tesla is actually working closely with utilities on the home battery product. “There’s a lot of interest, and a lot of utilities working in this space, and we’re talking to almost all of them,” chief technology officer JB Straubel said on the conference call. More likely, the batteries will help people sell excess energy back into the grid, and save money on their electric bills.

Rive envisages a scenario where batteries with storage capacity were optimized across the grid, allowing utilities to direct clean solar electricity more efficiently, lowering costs for everyone and helping the environment. “We can do so much more working together than we can working alone.”

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

As reported by Slashdot: two companies, Republic Wireless and FreedomPop, that reduce
cellphone costs by relying on strategically placed Wi-Fi routers are at
the forefront of a tantalizing communications concept that has proved hard to produce on a big scale. The concept championed by the two little companies in their nationwide
services is surprisingly simple. They offer services that rely primarily
on Wi-Fi networks, and in areas without Wi-Fi, customers can pull a
signal from regular cell towers. "Wi-Fi first is a massive disrupter to
the current cost structure of the industry," says Stephen Stokols.
"That's going to be a big shock to the carriers." For $5 a month, customers of Republic Wireless can make calls or connect to the Internet solely over Wi-Fi. For $10 a month, they can use both Wi-Fi and a cellular connection from
Sprint in Republic's most popular option. Republic Wireless's parent
company, Bandwidth.com, a telecommunications provider with about 400
employees, developed a technique to move calls seamlessly between
different Wi-Fi networks and cell towers. "You can't pretend these
companies are major players by any stretch. But I think their real
importance is proof of concept," says Craig Moffett. "They demonstrate
just how disruptive a Wi-Fi-first operator can be, and just how much
cost they can take out."

In major cities, the Wi-Fi-first network makes sense. People use
smartphones frequently while sitting around their offices and
apartments, and Wi-Fi can handle the job just fine. But once people
start moving around, it is not so simple.

A person briefed on Google's plans, who spoke on the condition of
anonymity because the conversations were private, says the company wants
to make use of the fiber network it has installed in various cities to
create an enormous network of Wi-Fi connections that phones could use to
place calls and use apps over the Internet.

In areas out of reach,
Google's network would switch over to cell towers leased by T-Mobile USA
and Sprint. Still many wonder if even the biggest companies could make a
Wi-Fi-based phone network work. "There are just so many places where
Wi-Fi doesn't reach," says Jan Dawson "and the quality of Wi-Fi that
you can find is often subpar."

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About Me

I have more than 25 years of experience in development, design, and mobile communications products and technology. I also enjoy skiing, hiking, scuba, tennis, reading, traveling, foreign languages, and painting. I'm an active member of the National Ski Patrol (NSP) and volunteer my time at either Loveland Ski resort, or Ski Cooper.